Talking Nicely With Others Makes You Smarter

Talking with other people in a friendly way can make it easier to solve common problems, a new University of Michigan study shows. But conversations that are competitive in tone, rather than cooperative, have no cognitive benefits.

Competitive conversations!

What do you mean competitive conversations?

Just like, things where you try to do better than the other person.

Ohhh yeah, I heard about that.

Yeah, I actually read about it a long time ago.

Me too, I read about it in, like, high school I think.

As a baby my mother told me about it.

On my family tree where it says my ancestors, it mentions the study.

When they found that ancient monkey-human, Lucy, she was actually still alive, but barely, and right before she died, she mentioned the study. Not a lot of people know that about Lucy, but I’ve known about it for years.